As you no doubt know already, Sally Ride—the first American woman in space, and only the third woman astronaut worldwide—passed away on Monday. Here’s a brief eulogy I wrote for her at Double X Science, along with extensive links to other sites commemorating her life and important contributions. Feel free to leave your own reminiscences in the comments here or over at Double X.

Spiral galaxies are common in the modern Universe, but they appear to be very rare in the early days. Astronomers have identified the earliest known spiral galaxy: over 10 billion light-years away! (Ars Technica)

If you took chemistry in school (as I did), you performed chemical reactions either at room temperature or over a heat source (a Bunsen burner or hot plate). The reactions involved huge numbers of atoms or molecules, and we didn’t worry much about the microscopic details. Now researchers have made a single atom react with a single ion, by manipulating their quantum states. (Ars Technica)

On a similar note, we learned about several basic types of molecular bonds, which all involve electrons. Chemists have calculated a way to make molecules magnetically (how alliterative!), though the field strengths involved only exist near neutron stars or white dwarfs. (Ars Technica)